Seattle faces $500k suit for pepper-spraying school teacher (VIDEO)

​A Seattle, Washington high school history teacher who was pepper-sprayed by police moments after speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day rally is suing the city for $500,000.

Attorneys for Jesse
Hagopian filed the claim against Seattle on Wednesday, nine days
after the incident unfolded during, ironically, an anti-police
brutality protest held in tandem with similar rallies across the
United States on the holiday named for the slain civil rights
leader.

Hagopian, a history teacher at Garfield High School who is known
throughout the region for his activism, had just finished
speaking during the January 19 event and was on the phone with
his mother when a female police officer began discharging her
pepper spray, striking multiple people.

An eyewitness was filming only a few feet away from where that
officer and others had formed a barricade along a city
intersection as law enforcement tried to control the crowd. A
separate video filmed from above suggests that an officer had
been knocked off their bicycle down the street, prompting the
police to try and clear the area.

The ground-level footage appears to show Hagopian on the phone,
walking towards the sidewalk, when he is blasted across the face
with a stream of pepper spray.

“Ah, f**k. They just
sprayed,”a voice on
the video is heard saying as the officer barks to the crowd while
attempting to clear the intersection.

Hagopian later got online and explained what happened in his own
words:

“I was marching for Martin Luther King day today – amazing
march! At one point after the big main march, group of bike cops
set up a line to keep us from marching. Some people walked
through the line, but I didn’t. When my phone rang, I turned away
from the cops and began walking away to answer the phone. A cop
then ran up in my face and pepper sprayed me right in the
face.”

The close-up video recording of the incident has since been
acquired by James Bible, the former president of the Seattle
chapter of the NAACP, who in turn posted it to YouTube on
Wednesday in concert with the announcement concerning the court
filing. Bible is also serving as Hagopian's attorney.

According to the Seattle Times, the suit alleges that Hagopian
“instantly felt a burning sensation in his eyes and had some
difficulty breathing.” The teacher later posted a photograph
online showing him trying to tame the effects of the spray by
dousing his face with milk.

“The main thing I’m upset about is that [I was on] the
sidewalk when I was pepper sprayed so there’s really no reason at
all they can use to justify what they did,” Hagopian told
The Skanner News.

“Recent police activities in Seattle serve as a reminder that
there is a great deal of work that remains to be done in terms of
police accountability,” Bible added. “We will be
forwarding information that we gather about this incident and
others to the Department of Justice.”

According to Seattle’s King 5 News, Bible said that Hagopian’s
mother had already filed a complaint with the city’s Office of
Police Accountability (OPA), but the NAACP wanted to pursue its
own claim against the city due to the group’s “lack of faith
in the OPA.”

If the city does not respond to the tort in 60 days, the network
added, the NAACP will file the suit.

Ansel Herz, a writer for Seattle’s The
Stranger newspaper, wrote that he asked the mayor of Seattle
and the city’s police chief for comment, but had not heard back
at the time of publishing.

"The silence from the Mayor's office and from Chief O'Toole
concerning SPD's actions in both the MLK pepper spraying matter,
and the false statement in the Wingate matter, is
deafening," weighed in Seattle/King County NAACP Economic
Chair Sheley Secrest, referring to a separate incident involving
the Seattle Police Department earlier that week.

"Don't attend an NAACP Black Lives Matter march and rally one
day saying that you stand against injustice in Ferguson,"
Secrest said of Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, according to The
Stranger, "and then sit idly by when the truth is revealed
that injustice sits squarely in Seattle."

Later on Wednesday, the office of Mayor Murray published a
statement acknowledging that the city would
investigate claims of excessive force during the MLK march.

“Under the accountability system that we’ve set up, the uses
of force that occurred during the MLK protests are currently
under review and being investigated. Moving forward, the City
must also continue to implement many other reforms to ensure our
officers are adequately trained and prepared to serve and protect
all of Seattle’s residents,” Murray said.